


the things which I have seen I now can see no more

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Episode Related, Episode: s04e15 Death Takes a Holiday, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:24:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Backstory for Pamela Barnes</p>
            </blockquote>





	the things which I have seen I now can see no more

Pamela is sixteen the first time she sees her own death. She opens that door right up and takes a good long look even though her mama says it can make you crazy knowing a thing like that. “Screw you,” Pamela thinks. “I’ll show you.” She’s never sure later who she means, her mama or Death, but the story ends the same either way.

Pamela throws Kevin Patterson’s keys into the lake and she lets all the air out of Jennie Smith’s tires and nobody drives home smashed after that party. Kevin calls his big brother and they all load into his flatbed and Pamela’s neck does not snap when her head hits Kevin’s windshield and her legs are not crushed under the dash and her last breath doesn’t taste of blood. “I did that,” she thinks with her head pillowed in Kevin’s lap, the song of wheels on asphalt loud in her ears. “I changed that.”

She doesn’t look again for a long time. Pamela got away with something and she knows it. Mama had taken her to see Aunt Rose once after Pamela came into her power, after they were sure. Aunt Rose was eerily beautiful—translucent skin with eyes like bruises in that pale, pale face. Her hair was short but dark and rich, just like every other woman with Barnes blood.

“Rose couldn’t leave well enough alone,” Mama told her. “She got so caught up in fixing what was to come—saving Daddy from the drink, keeping those kids out of our barn in ’73, holding on to Richard. There’s no joy in that kind of life. Rose got to where she thought the clothes she wore or what foot she stepped off the curb with first could change the way her life unfolded. Then she blamed herself when things went wrong. And that broke my baby sister.” Mama thumbed a tear from the corner of her eye. “We have a gift, Pammy, and the gift is good. But don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Some things aren’t meant to be known. Stay out of your own damn future.” 

Aunt Rose slept the whole time they were at Grace Memorial and Pamela was glad. 

When Pamela meets Jesse, she decides that one more quick look won’t hurt. She is twenty years old now and she has met the man she is going to marry. Jesse is a tattoo artist two towns over; he doesn’t hunt but his father did and he knows that salt is good for more than popcorn. Pamela doesn’t have to hide who she is or lie about the people that show up at the Barnes’ house all hours of the night. She is the luckiest girl in the world.

One night while Jesse is fast asleep beside her, she closes her eyes and holds her breath and peers down the road a ways. Pamela doesn’t like what she sees and for the first time she mistrusts her gift. What she perceives, as if through a thick wall of water, is Jesse carefully closing the screen door behind him. Jesse with his arm around a skinny blonde. Jesse’s tail lights fading out of view down Anderson Street. Pamela thinks, “No fucking way. I can change this too.”

She tries. Nobody can say later that she didn’t try. Pamela dyes her hair a cheap platinum that makes her want to puke every time she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She learns how to make manicotti and she feigns an interest in NASCAR and she makes Jesse so goddamn happy that he will never ever leave. He inks his name on her back and it’s better than sex, better than magic—whisper thin line between pleasure and pain and blood enough to make that _forever_ real.

After he leaves, after Pamela has cut her hair down to the scalp, after she has screamed her voice to gravel, Pamela calls her mama over.

“Oh, honey,” Mama says, running her fingers over the mess Pamela’s made of her hair. “I should’ve brought my clippers.”

Pamela laughs, an ugly donkey bray of a laugh, but it’s real and it heals even as it hurts.

Mama says, “Do you want me to do something about that tattoo?”

Pamela waves her off. “Let it be.” Better some asshole’s name on her back than a straitjacket. If Pamela ever gets the urge to look into her future again, _Jesse forever_ can remind her that she hates who the peepshow turns her into, that once again she’s gotten off easy.

For the longest time, Pamela leaves well enough alone. For years, she helps hunters keep themselves alive and she connects the spirit world with the living and she reads the cards and the leaves and the freaking crystal ball for the tourists and she doesn’t take even so much as a side-long glance down her future. Until she meets the Winchesters.

These are some damaged boys—broken again and again and knit back together in ways that shouldn’t work at all and barely do. Darkness clings to them both. Sometimes Pamela can’t bear to be in the same room with them; they wear their pain on their sleeves, open and raw and right there for the knowing for those who can see. Sometimes, though, who they were, who they might be again—two boys walking lockstep, a million dollar set of dimples, that goddamn car with the windows rolled down and the radio blaring—shines through the black and Pamela wants to grab that with both hands and hang on for the ride.

When the only sight left to her is the one her mama passed down to her, Pamela takes a final survey of the path she will walk. It’s so fucking stupid, the way she dies this time, stuck in the gut by some demony son of a bitch. And so easily changed. Pamela can see that clear as day. All she needs is a little backup—Bobby or Willie Cartwright maybe, or even Ruby. This will work.

Except that it doesn’t. When she was sixteen, Pamela didn’t give a shit about permutations. She saw her kneecaps ground into powder and Kevin’s face split open on the steering wheel and she didn’t for one second think she was preventing anything other than their deaths. Pamela’s older now, and if not wiser, certainly more cynical. If she changes things, she _changes_ them, and Armageddon’s too close to risk making the end any closer. So she does the math. When Bobby stands guard, the mother of two he should be saving from vengeful spirits dies while her children watch. Willie’s throat is slashed and he bleeds all over Sam’s jeans. Pamela dies that that round as well. Ruby is forced from her host, so much black smoke funneling out the window and away, and Pamela still gets stabbed. She makes a list of all the hunters she knows and she steals John Winchester’s journal and adds all the hunters he knew and every damn time she plays the scene, somebody dies. Pamela throws up her hands, decides she just won’t help at all. Let the Winchesters find some other way. That time when she looks ahead, what she sees makes her vomit until she’s got nothing left in her stomach. 

Pamela wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and she stands on her own two feet and when Sam eventually calls, her voice is steady as she answers the phone. 

Of course, nobody said a girl can’t be pissy at her own damn funeral. She’s earned that right.

The knife goes in easy, slides on in like it belongs, and the pain when it hits her is more intense than she expected. Hundreds of miles away, Aunt Rose jerks awake and wonders if Pamela is dying now or if her death happened years ago or if it is still to come.

In the few seconds before she dies, Pamela sees everything so clearly—a final gift, a benediction. Her last breath tastes like blood.


End file.
